Red worm composting
Worm composting need worms to break the leftover food, lawn waste, and newspaper into worm castings. Without the worms, you would need a lot of time for natural composting to turn these materials into rich, organic soil! And even then, you wouldn’t end up with worm castings!
So, what worms should you use?
Red worms (Red Wigglers)
The most popular worms for indoor worm bin composting are red worms (Eisenia Foetida) (also known as Red Wigglers). These red worms can eat half of their weight per day! They are fantastic for bins because they naturally enjoy staying toward the top few inches of food and thus, these red worms are therefore very suitable for working their way up the bins (if the unit is stacked like mine is).
For my outdoor composting piles, I use red worms and earthworms. The problem with using earthworms is that they really enjoy going down….up to 5 feet down. Well, I am not about to dig down 5 feet to get worm castings. So, red worms are the worms for me with my composting.
Where do I buy red worms?
You can buy red worms locally. Or, you can buy over the internet (I did, with very successful results). The company sent the worms in a bag and peat moss (to ensure drying). Once the worms arrived, I added water to the peat moss and then put them in a container I had already prepared for their arrival. This contained bedding (shredded, damp newspaper, and plenty of salad remains and some fruit skins thrown in). The red worms quickly recovered from the transportation and were soon eating, burrowing, and I assume, getting to know their new home. I have yet to hear any complaints from the red worms…even though I lift up a bin several times a day to show it to my younger son. He loves to see them pulling themselves up from a lower bin into a higher one.
Another way to get red worms is to make friends with a farmer. If they have piles of manure, there will be red worms composting the manure. Bring a shovel and a pail and dig down…you’ll find them squirming around and composting like mad. Just note, be careful adding manure to any composting bins with worms. If it is too fresh, it will produce enough ammonia to harm/kill your worms. Use older manure….red worms love the stuff. I guess for red worms, manure is like steak, potatoes and cheesecake for me. Keep it coming.
If you purchase your red worms online, they are likely to ship Tuesday/Wednesday. The reason for this seems to be that they don’t want to have the worms sitting over the weekend at the post office. You can talk to somebody (or email them) to find out when they will ship. Just be sure you’re home when the red worms arrive. You don’t want them sitting at the post office for long.
And when the red worms arrive, have a habitat ready for them!